Stokely Carmichael

He promoted what he calls "political modernization." This idea included three major concepts: "1) questioning old values and institutions of the society; 2) searching for new and different forms of political structure to solve political and economic problems; and, 3) broadening the base of political participation to include more people in the decision-making process."[68] By questioning "old values and institutions", Carmichael was referring not only to the established Black leadership of the time but also to the values and institutions of the nation as a whole. He criticized the emphasis on the American "middle-class." "The values," he said, "of that class are based on material aggrandizement, not the expansion of humanity." (40) Carmichael believed that blacks were being lured to enter the "middle-class" as a trap, in which they would be assimilated into the white world by turning their backs on others of their race who were still suffering. This assimilation, he thought, was an inherent indictment of blackness and validation of whiteness as the preferred state. He said, "Thus we reject the goal of assimilation into middle-class America because the values of that class are in themselves anti-humanist and because that class as a social force perpetuates racism."^[68]

Secondly, Carmichael discussed searching for different forms of political structure to solve political and economic problems. At the time, the established forms of political structure were the SCLC and the NAACP. These groups were religiously and academically based and focused on nonviolence and steady legal and legislative change within established U.S. systems and structures. Carmichael rejected that. He discusses the development of the Mississippi Freedom Democrats, the 1966 local election in Lowndes County, and the political history of Tuskegee, Alabama. He chose these examples as places where blacks changed the system by political and legal maneuvering within the system, but said they ultimately failed to achieve more than the bare minimum. In the process, he believed they reinforced the political and legal structures that perpetuated the racism they were fighting.

In response to these failures and to offer a way forward, Carmichael discusses the concept of coalition with regard to the Civil Rights Movement. The leadership of the movement had affirmed that anyone who truly believed in their cause was welcome to join and march. Carmichael offered a different vision. Influenced by Fanon's ideas in The Wretched of the Earth, wherein two groups were not "complementary" (could have no overlap) until they were mutually exclusive (were on an equal power footing economically, socially, politically, etc.), Carmichael said that U.S. blacks had to unite and build their power independent of the white structure, or they would never be able to build a coalition that would function for both parties, not just the dominant one. He said, "we want to establish the grounds on which we feel political coalitions can be viable."^[68] For this to happen, Carmichael argued that blacks had to address three myths regarding coalition: "that the interests of black people are identical with the interests of certain liberal, labor, or other reform groups"; that a viable coalition can be created between "the politically and economically secure and the politically and economically insecure"; and that a coalition can be "sustained on a moral, friendly, sentimental basis; by appeals to conscience." He believed that each of these myths showed the need for two groups to be mutually exclusive, and on relatively equal footing, to be in a viable coalition.

This philosophy, grounded in the independence literature of Africa and Latin America, became the basis for a great deal of Carmichael's work. He believed the Black Power Movement had to be developed outside the white power structure.

Carmichael also continued as a strong critic of the

The death of Che Guevara places a responsibility on all revolutionaries of the World to redouble their decision to fight on to the final defeat of Imperialism. That is why in essence Che Guevara is not dead, his ideas are with us.[70]

Carmichael visited the

Carmichael was present in Washington, D.C., on April 5, 1968, the night after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. He led a group through the streets, demanding that businesses close out of respect. He tried to prevent violence, but the situation escalated beyond his control. Due to his reputation as a provocateur, the news media blamed Carmichael for the ensuing violence as mobs rioted along U Street and other areas of black commercial development.^[72]

Carmichael held a press conference the next day at which he predicted mass racial violence in the streets.^[73] Since moving to Washington, he had been under nearly constant FBI surveillance. After the riots, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover instructed a team of agents to find evidence connecting Carmichael to them. He was also subjected to COINTELPRO's bad-jacketing technique. Huey P. Newton suggested Carmichael was a CIA agent, slander that led to Carmichael's break with the Panthers and his exile from the U.S. the following year.^[74]

1969–98: Travel to Africa

In 1968, he married

Three months after his arrival in Guinea, in July 1969 Carmichael published a formal rejection of the Black Panthers, condemning them for not being separatist enough and for their "dogmatic party line favoring alliances with white radicals".^[4] The Panthers believed that white activists could help the movement, while Carmichael had come to agree with Malcolm X that white activists should organize their own communities before trying to lead black people.

Life in Guinea

Carmichael remained in Guinea after his separation from the Black Panther Party. He continued to travel, write, and speak in support of international

Carmichael changed his name to Kwame Ture in 1978 to honor Nkrumah and Touré, who had become his patrons.[4] At the end of his life, friends called him by both names, "and he doesn't seem to mind".^[6]

In 1986, two years after Sékou Touré's death, the military regime that took his place arrested Carmichael for his association with Touré, and jailed him for three days on suspicion of attempting to overthrow the government. Although Touré was known for jailing and torturing his opponents (some 50,000 people are believed to have been killed under his regime) Carmichael had never publicly criticized the man he named himself after.^[4] From the late 1970s till his death, he answered his phone by announcing, "Ready for the revolution!"^[4]

CIA surveillance and secret British attempts to discredit

Carmichael's suspicions about CIA surveillance were confirmed in 2007 by declassified documents revealing that the agency had tracked him from 1968 as part of their surveillance of Black activists abroad. The surveillance continued for years.^[77]

Documents declassified in 2022 revealed that the

All-African People's Revolutionary Party

External videos
"Life and Career of Kwame Ture", C-SPAN[79]

For the final 30 years of his life, Kwame Ture was devoted to the All-African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP). His mentor Nkrumah had many ideas for unifying the African continent, and Ture extended the scope of these ideas to the entire African diaspora. He was a Central Committee member during his association with the A-APRP and made many speeches on the party's behalf.[80]

Ture did not simply study with Sékou Touré and Kwame Nkrumah. The latter had been designated honorary co-president of Guinea after he was deposed by the US-backed coup in Ghana.^[81] Ture worked overtly and covertly to "Take Nkrumah Back to Ghana" (according to the movement's slogan). He became a member of the Democratic Party of Guinea (PDG), the revolutionary ruling party. He sought Nkrumah's permission to launch the All-African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP), which Nkrumah had called for in his book Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare. After several discussions, Nkrumah gave his blessing.

Ture was convinced that the A-APRP was needed as a permanent mass-based organization in all countries where people of African descent lived. For the last decades of his life, a period often ignored by popular media, Ture worked full-time as an organizer of the party. He spoke on its behalf on several continents, at college campuses, community centers, and other venues. He was instrumental in strengthening ties between the African/Black liberation movement and several revolutionary or progressive organizations, both African and non-African. Notable among them were the

Routinely, Ture was regarded as the leader of the A-APRP, but his only titles were "Organizer" and Central Committee member. Beginning in the mid-1970s, the A-APRP began each May to sponsor African Liberation Day (ALD), a continuation of the African Freedom Day Nkrumah began in 1958 in Ghana.[82] Although the party was involved in or was primary or co-sponsor of other ALD annual observances, marches, and rallies around the world, the best-known and largest event was held annually in Washington, D.C, usually at Meridian Hill Park (also known as Malcolm X Park) at 16th and W Streets, NW.

Lecturing in the Caribbean and the United States

While making his home in Guinea, Ture traveled frequently. In the last quarter of the 20th century, he became the world's most active and prominent exponent of pan-Africanism, defined by Nkrumah and the A-APRP as "The Liberation and Unification of Africa Under Scientific Socialism".^{[citation needed]}

Ture often returned to speak to audiences of thousands (including students and townspeople) at his alma mater, Howard University, and other campuses. The Party worked to recruit students and other youth, and Ture hoped to attract them with his speeches. He also worked to raise the political consciousness of African/Black people in general. He formed the A-APRP with the initial goal of putting "Africa" on the lips of Black people throughout the

Under his leadership, the A-APRP organized the All African Women's Revolutionary Union and the Sammy Younge Jr. Brigade (named after the first black college student to die during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement) as component organizations.

Ture and Cuban president Fidel Castro admired each other, sharing a common opposition to imperialism. In Ture's final letter, he wrote:

It was Fidel Castro who before the OLAS (Organization of Latin American States) Conference said "if imperialism touches one grain of hair on his head, we shall not let the fact pass without retaliation." It was he, who on his own behalf, asked them all to stay in contact with me when I returned to the United States to offer me protection.^[83]

Ture was ill when he gave his final speech at Howard University. A standing-room-only crowd in Rankin Chapel paid tribute to him, and he spoke boldly, as usual.^[84] A small group of student leaders from Howard and a former Party member traveled to Harlem (Sugar Hill) in New York City to bid Ture farewell shortly before his final return to Guinea. Also present that evening were Kathleen Cleaver and another Black Panther, Dhoruba bin Wahad. Ture was in good spirits though in pain. The group included men and women born in Africa, South America, the Caribbean, as well as the USA.

Illness and death

After his diagnosis of

In a final interview given in April 1998 to The Washington Post, Ture criticized the limited economic and electoral progress made by African Americans in the U.S. during the previous 30 years. He acknowledged that Black people had won election to the mayor's office in major cities, but said that, as the mayors' power had generally diminished over earlier decades, such progress was essentially meaningless.^[6]

External videos
"Memorial Service for Kwame Ture", C-SPAN[87]

In 1998, Ture died of prostate cancer at the age of 57 in Conakry, Guinea. He had said that his cancer "was given to me by forces of American imperialism and others who conspired with them."^[4] He claimed that the FBI had infected him with cancer in an assassination attempt.^[88]

The civil rights leader Jesse Jackson spoke in celebration of Ture's life, saying: "He was one of our generation who was determined to give his life to transforming America and Africa. He was committed to ending racial apartheid in our country. He helped to bring those walls down".^[89] NAACP Chair Julian Bond said that Carmichael "ought to be remembered for having spent almost every moment of his adult life trying to advance the cause of black liberation."^[60]

Carmichael's marriages and divorces

Ture married singer Miriam Makeba from South Africa in the U.S. in 1968. They divorced in Guinea after separating in 1973.

Later he married Marlyatou Barry, a Guinean doctor. They divorced sometime after having a son, Bokar, in 1981. By 1998, Marlyatou Barry and Bokar were living in Arlington County, Virginia, near Washington, D.C. Using a statement from the All-African People's Revolutionary Party as a reference, Ture's 1998 obituary in The New York Times said he was survived by two sons, Bokar Biro Ture and Alpha Yaya Ture; three sisters; and his mother.^[4]

Legacy

Ture, along with Charles V. Hamilton,^[90] is credited with coining the phrase "institutional racism", defined as racism that occurs through institutions such as public bodies and corporations, including universities. In the late 1960s Ture defined "institutional racism" as "the collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their color, culture or ethnic origin".^[91]

In his book on King,

Joseph credits Ture with expanding the parameters of the civil rights movement, asserting that his black power strategy "didn't disrupt the civil rights movement. It spoke truth to power to what so many millions of young people were feeling. It actually cast a light on people who were in prisons, people who were welfare rights activists, tenants' rights activists, and also in the international arena." Tavis Smiley calls Ture "one of the most underappreciated, misunderstood, undervalued personalities this country's ever produced".^[56]

In 2002, the American-born scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Ture as one of his 100 Greatest African Americans.^[95]

Ture^[96] is also remembered for his actions in James Meredith's March Against Fear in June 1966, when he issued the call for Black Power. When Meredith got shot, Carmichael came up with the phrase and gathered a crowd to chant it in Greenwood, Mississippi. Already, earlier that day, he had been arrested for the 27th time; he spoke to over 3,000 people that day in the park. Ture was angry that day because black people had been "chanting" freedom for almost six years with no results, so he wanted to change the chant.^[97] He also participated in and contributed to the Black Freedom Struggle. Many people have overlooked his involvement in the movement.^[98] He never switched from left to right in his politics as he got older, and his trajectory both marked and influenced the course of black militancy in the United States. The outrage that most affected him was King's assassination.^{[citation needed]}

Controversies

Views on Adolf Hitler

Although he stated in his posthumously published memoirs that he had never been anti-semitic, in 1970 Carmichael proclaimed: "I have never admired a white man, but the greatest of them, to my mind, was Hitler."^[99] However, Carmichael in the same speech condemned Hitler on moral grounds, Carmichael himself stating:

Adolph Hitler—I'm not putting a judgment on what he did—if you asked me for my judgment morally, I would say it was bad, what he did was wrong, was evil, etc. But I would say he was a genius, nevertheless ... You say he's not a genius because he committed bad acts. That's not the question. The question is, he does have genius. Now when we condemn him morally or ethically, we will say, well, he was absolutely wrong, he should be killed, he should be murdered, etc., etc. ... But if we're judging his genius objectively, we have to admit that the man was a genius. He forced the entire world to fight him. He was fighting America, France, Britain, Russia, Italy once— then they switched sides—all of them at the same time, and whipping them. That's a genius, you cannot deny that.^[100]

Views on women

In November 1964 Carmichael made a joking remark in response to a SNCC position paper written by his friends Casey Hayden and Mary E. King on the position of women in the movement. In the course of an irreverent comedy monologue he performed at a party after SNCC's Waveland conference, Carmichael said, "The position of women in the movement is prone."^[101] A number of women were offended. In a 2006 The Chronicle of Higher Education article, historian Peniel E. Joseph later wrote:

While the remark was made in jest during a 1964 conference, Carmichael and black-power activists did embrace an aggressive vision of manhood — one centered on black men's ability to deploy authority, punishment, and power. In that, they generally reflected their wider society's blinders about women and politics.^[102]

Carmichael's colleague, John Lewis, stated in his autobiography, March, that the comment was a joke, uttered as Carmichael and other SNCC officials were "blowing off steam" following the adjournment of a meeting at a staff retreat in Waveland, Mississippi.^[103] When asked about the comment, former SNCC field secretary Casey Hayden stated: "Our paper on the position of women came up, and Stokely in his hipster rap comedic way joked that 'the proper position of women in SNCC is prone'. I laughed, he laughed, we all laughed. Stokely was a friend of mine."^[92] In her memoir, Mary E. King wrote that Carmichael was "poking fun at his own attitudes" and that "Casey and I felt, and continue to feel, that Stokely was one of the most responsive men at the time that our anonymous paper appeared in 1964."^[104]

Carmichael appointed several women to posts as project directors during his tenure as chairman of SNCC; by the latter half of the 1960s (considered to be the "Black Power era"), more women were in charge of SNCC projects than during the first half.^[105]

In popular culture

Film

• In Spike Lee's 2018 film BlacKkKlansman, Kwame Ture is portrayed by Corey Hawkins.^[106]
• In Mario Van Peebles's 1995 film Panther based on Melvin Van Peebles's screenplay, Stokely Carmichael is portrayed by Mario Van Peebles.

Exhibition

• In 2018 a national tribute 'the fight of a lifetime' is dedicated to him during a one-month exhibition at the Gamal Abdel Nasser University of Conakry.^[107]

Music

• Carmichael's speeches have been sampled by composer and DJ Hideki Naganuma.^[108]

Works

• ISBN 0679743138
• Stokely Speaks: From Black Power to Pan-Africanism (1965)
  ISBN 978-1-55652-649-7
• Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) (2005)
  ISBN 978-0684850047
• Black Power (1968), Liberation Records DL-6
• Free Huey! (1970), Black Forum/Motown Records BF-452 (reissued in 2022 as Black Forum/Motown/UMe/Universal 456 139)

Further reading

• Carmichael, Stokely (1966). "Toward Black Liberation". The Massachusetts Review. 7 (4): 639–651.
  JSTOR 25087498
  .
• Carmichael, Stokely (and
  Michael Thelwell
  ), Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture). New York: Scribner, 2005.
• Carmichael, Stokely (and Charles V. Hamilton), Black Power: The Politics of Liberation. Vintage; reissued 1992.
• Carmichael, Stokely, Stokely Speaks: Black Power Back to Pan-Africanism. Random House, 1971, 292 pages.
• Joseph, Peniel E., Waiting 'Til The Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America. Henry Holt, 2007.
• Joseph, Peniel E. Stokely: A Life. New York: Basic Books, 2014.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Stokely Carmichael.

Wikiquote has quotations related to Stokely Carmichael.

• SNCC Digital Gateway: Stokely Carmichael, Documentary website created by the SNCC Legacy Project and Duke University, telling the story of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee & grassroots organizing from the inside-out
• Stokely Carmichael at
  IMDb
• Stokely Carmichael at
  Curlie
• Stokely Carmichael at Spartacus Educational.
• Stokely Carmichael page Archived December 7, 2010, at the Wayback Machine. Stokely Carmichael spoke to an enthusiastic crowd at Garfield High School in Seattle, Washington, on April 19, 1967. Audio and slideshow. Retrieved May 3, 2005.
• Stokely Carmichael FBI Records - Stokely Carmichael records at FBI's The Vault Project.
• Image of Stokely Carmichael, speaking with a crowd of more than 6500 at Will Rogers Park in Los Angeles, California, 1966. Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive (Collection 1429). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.

Research resources

• Stokely Carmichael-Lorna D. Smith Collection, 1964–1972 (5 linear ft.) is housed in the Department of Special Collections and University Archives at Stanford University Libraries

Videos

• Montgomey Interview video at The Jack Rabin Collection of Alabama Civil Rights and Southern Activists Stokely Carmichael
• Kwame Ture on Zionism
• February 17, 1968 on
  PBS
  .org
• Consciousness and Unconsciousness Archived June 27, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
• With H. Rap Brown, Oakland, 1968 (longer version of PBS clip)
• From Protest to Resistance: A Critical Look at the New Left. A 1968
  TV movie with interviews and footage of Carmichael's speeches, made by Saul Landau
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• University of Nebraska Omaha, 1993
• Eyes on the Prize interview (1986) in the American Archive of Public Broadcasting
• Kwame Ture Speaks at Houston Universities - The KHOU-TV Collection (1967) from TexasArchive.org